Lincoln Mullen is a PhD candidate at Brandeis University and a historian of religion in early America and the nineteenth century.

Last Thursday at noon the Digital Public Library of America launched its website. The opening festivities, which had been booked solid with a long wait list for weeks, were canceled, since the venue at the main branch of the Boston Public Library was adjacent to the site of the bombing in Boston earlier that week. But the DPLA, which is a website and not a location, went ahead with the launch of the public service anyway....

Here’s to the hardworking DPLA staff–Dan Cohen, Emily Gore, Amy Rudersdorf, Kenny Whitebloom, and probably others–board of directors, committees, partner institutions, and funders. The DPLA is already a useful tool with some amazing functionality, and as more partners join the effort, the DPLA will only become more important to scholars and to the nation.